Review: Isley Brothers “Shout” Chene Park season to a close

DETROIT -- Chene Park Amphitheatre hosted its final concert of the summer season Sunday, August 31, featuring the Isley Brothers.

The genuinely cool cats strutted onto the sage for a two-hour show that featured more than 14 hits from their first album in 1962 all the way to 2006’s “Baby Makin’ Music.” Kicking the show off with the uptempo 1975 hit “Fight the Power,” Ronald Isley’s famed falsetto and vocal acrobatics showed that at 73, he could still deliver.

Sounding sultry and alluring, the group led into “That Lady” with Isley coyly gliding across the stage as a mystery women wearing a black leotard and thigh-high boots complete with red lipstick prowled around, attempting to seduce him. He introduced “Between the Sheets” as “one of my favorite songs,” crowd hung on to every word and sang along.

As Isley asked for “all the ladies to get up off their feet,” “Its Yo Thang” featured three scantily clad ladies cat-walked around the stage performing sexy dances – shaking their thangs, in other works -- alongside Isley throughout the song. Younger brother Ernie Isley, meanwhile, took center stage for astounding electric guitar solos on “Voyage to Atlantis” and the Isleys’ cover of Seals & Croft’s “Summer Breeze.”

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Ron Isley slipped away at one point, returning as the “Mr. Biggs” character he crated in collaboration with acolyte R. Kelly, complete with a cane and black shades as he performed the “Contagious,” “Down Low,” and “Showdown.” The finale, meanwhile, gave the Chene crowd reason to shout – literally, as the Isleys rocked through both parts of their enduring smash “Shout,” which got fans out of their seats, dancing and shouting, as the song commanded, “a little bit louder.”